Canada’s Conservative Party announced on Monday it supports a single tax return for Quebecers.
Party leader Andrew Scheer revealed his support for a single form in an announcement in Quebec City Monday. The new form would be managed by the provincial government in Quebec City.
Currently, taxpayers in Quebec fill out two forms for their taxes – one for provincial, the other for federal.
Single tax systems do exist in other provinces, but those are managed by the federal government.
In May, Quebec Finance Minister Carlos Leitao said they would officially ask the Trudeau government to allow the province to collect federal taxes on Ottawa’s behalf. Members of the National Assembly previously passed a unanimous motion calling for a single-form system to be implemented.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau declined the request.
The debate was sparked when 89 per cent of delegates at a meeting of federal Conservatives in Quebec voted in favour of a resolution to combine federal and provincial tax returns into a single form collected and administered by Quebec.
The province has collected the GST in Quebec for the federal government since the early 1990s.
Scheer, whose party won a byelection in the riding of Chicoutimi-Le Fjord last week behind ex-hockey coach Richard Martel, has been aggressively courting Quebec voters in recent months.
- With files from The Canadian Press
